Dear Dad

I love you! I love you, too. It’s all here for you. It’s all in your heart.

🙂 Take it. This will sustain you through the seeming groundlessness of what is left. Let it transform you.

(Silence)

Dad, I will just write letters

to you now. I wanted so much

to pretend you were here,

that I could hear you. I will still

imagine your shoulder and my

younger self having your love,

but I know better than

to speak for you. I’ll just

share and remember

what your care feels like

for me now. Instead of columns, I will write in long lines that fill the page with my words to you. I will remember some of the things I have written on your behalf that I think you would have loved. I still think that at your shoulder I gain strength, and I will see that in the moment I am in. But I cannot answer for you anymore, any more than I can answer for anyone else, or for what they might be thinking. My impression is that your shoulder is there, your eyes are warm, and your smile is real. That is enough for me tonight.